Supervisors blame lawmakers for long Election Day lines

January 14, 2013|By Aaron Deslatte, Tallahassee Bureau Chief

TALLAHASSEE – Florida election supervisors taking heat for last fall's elections woes pointed the finger Monday at two sources of confusion and angst that were outside of their control -- the length of last fall's ballot and limits on early voting days and locations.

Last month, Secretary of State Ken Detzner blamed Florida's long lines and delay in calling a presidential winner on five "underperforming" county elections offices in Broward, Lee, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties.

The Senate Ethics and Elections Committee took testimony under oath Monday from four of those five county supervisors. They argued that much of the blame fell on a historically long list of 11 constitutional amendments that slowed lines, and a bottleneck of voters brought about by reducing early voting days from 14 to 8.

Afterward, Senate Elections Chairman Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, said he would look at expanding the number of days of early voting and the number of authorized polling places in a bill he expects to file next month, adding "I don't think it's the fault of the Legislature 100 percent that we had those lines." He also said he wants to look at security of absentee ballots, following several complaints of fraud last year.

Latvala said he would "work very hard, have a lot of conversations" to produce a bill that would draw Democratic support.

A Democrat, Sen. Jeff Clemens, D-West Palm Beach, has filed a bill to allow voters to restrict the number of constitutional amendments. But Latvala said he is "not ready to jump on the bandwagon" and impose limits.

The Republican-controlled Legislature loaded the 2012 ballot with 11 constitutional amendments ranging from criticism of Obamacare and abortion restrictions, to property- and business- tax breaks. Voters defeated all but three noncontroversial amendments.

The questions had a total of 2,263 words. By comparison, the total of 17 amendments that ran on the ballot between 2002 and 2010 had a combined total of 2,371 words, according to a legislative report.

Many of Florida's biggest counties are required to produce ballots in multiple languages.

Miami-Dade County Elections Supervisor Penelope Townsley said her office's 12-page ballot "was the largest ballot the county has ever produced." So, when 56,000 absentee ballots showed up over the last 24-hours of the election, she said, the verification and processing of ballots took time.

The Legislature is exempt from the 75-word limit imposed on citizen-authored ballot summaries. The Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections is asking the Legislature to live within that brevity limit.

"If we can elect a President of the United States based only on his or her first and last name, I believe we can administer amendments with 75 words," said Seminole County Supervisor Michael Ertel.

Another concern was the shortened number of days and sites for early voting.

Florida lawmakers in 2011 shortened early voting from two weeks to eight days, although they kept the same 96 total hours when counties could allow it. Early voting sites are limited to supervisors' offices, city halls and libraries.

"Even though we had more early voting sites than any other county, we still had two-hour waits," said Duval Supervisor Jerry Holland. "Starting a few days earlier would have been helpful."

The supervisors association is asking lawmakers to let the counties have the flexibility to return to 14 days of early voting, and to choose sites like convention centers, community centers or fairgrounds.

But ballot design and days weren't the only problems. Miami-Dade's long lines were partially the result of the county' decision not to "re-precinct" following redistricting, a decision the county's election supervisor took ownership of at the hearing.

"Even if these [reforms] had been in place you would have still had problems in Miami-Dade County with long voting lines," said Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine.

Lawmakers drilled into why many counties hadn't utilized some of the city halls and libraries available to them. A Senate staff analysis showed a wide disparity between the number of voters per early-voting site in Florida's 12 biggest counties.

Pinellas County, for instance, opened only three early-voting sites, which equates to one per 210,506 voters. Duval had the lowest average, with 17 voting sites and 30,501 voters per site.

Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties all had more than 62,000 voters per early-voting site. But so did Orange County, at 69,478 voters per location.

Palm Beach Supervisor Susan Bucher said her county used only 14 sites because of physical limitations at most of the others. Shaw said the unused sites are antiquated, tiny city halls in gated communities or without enough floor space, parking and electrical infrastructure to handle voting equipment.